New paintings and regular art updates.
Not good photos of these. I’ve been using a black felt pen and them a broad nib cartridge pen. I took the photos of them in bright sunshine so they were overexposed. I’ve used the curves option on my phones photo editor to try and get them less bright but on one of them this caused a blue cast. The drawing of the cup is just a doodle because we were messing about with clay.
I’m a bit disappointed with my phones camera. Although this image of an oak green man came out OK three other photos of similar green men didn’t register. I think it’s because I have too many photos saved and as most of them are MB not KB they are too large as files so they take up too much space.
This oak man was for sale at the Dorothy Clive garden near Woore, Staffordshire. It was rammed with people, there was a great plant sale on, but it was crowded with hundreds of people. We struggled to get a seat and had a quick lunch. I usually go there to see the rhododendrons in flower but it’s a couple of weeks before they will be out in the quarry garden. In the meantime they had a massive plant sale with stalls so we came home with about 15 varied and interesting plants. Glad to be home to get a rest.
A warm evening in March, out at Westport lake. One of my favourite places for a walk. Over the last few years the trees have grown and the management of the lake has been taken over by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. The sun reflects off the water and ripples from the swimming birds make it sparkle. The lake was artificially created from the remains of a marl pit (where they dug out the clay for potteries) and old mine workings. It was created for wildlife in the 1980s I think when Shelton Bar Steel works closed ?
Life spreads and grows. Greenery overtakes the tallest buildings, ivy scrambles, buddlea infiltrates. And beauty comes from waste and destruction.
Oh I did like drawing this. It must be 10 years ago. I like my digital experiments. This may well be turned into a painting. That’s why I like experimenting. My mind can be free. This was another sketchfu drawing.
I shared this a few days ago as part of a group of photos but I came back to it because I loved the vibrant colours. It goes with my mood today. Gold wallflowers and pink dianthus I think are the types of flowers.
An artist at Spode planted and looks after this area just outside the spode studios. They always cheer me up when I go in. To see them in the middle of industrial delapidation lifts my spirits.
On the road that passes the site there was a project called greening Stoke where various shop fronts and bits of derelict land were planted up with wild flowers. They are still growing. Good to see green in the urban landscape.
you’ve got a spider in your ear,
with a heart on its back.
It’s smiling gently
As it builds its web.
It stops thoughts leaking out
when you lie on your side.
Stops ear wax escaping
And keeps bed bugs out.
It plays on your eardrum
Tapping timpani
When you are asleep!
So don’t be afraid if you see a spider in my ear.
It’s just looking after it
and keeping it clean.
My picture of pink blossom today, photo bombed by pigeons! I might turn the top half of the photo into a painting, the pigeons just add some movement to it. This year the blossom has been amazing. My cherry blossom is starting to fade and blow off the tree. I don’t know if that’s due to cold nights or drought as the weather has been very dry. There are thunder storms due later in the week. I guess that will remove the blossom.
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This took a few hours to draw on the old sketchfu website. I do love astronomy. This is not accurate, it couldn’t be with the limited tools that were on the website but it was fun to try and get a reasonable representation of it. Space is so infinitely beautiful. It makes me realise how tiny I am, how small our planet and solar system are in relationship to the mass of stars in a galaxy and the smallness of galaxies in relation to the infinity of the universe.
How important we think we are, we have so much on this world that we are using up. We are big in comparison with insects and smaller still bacteria. Then even smaller viruses. The smallest things, molecules, Atoms and sub atomic particles.
Apparently we are halfway on the scale of size in the universe. Halfway between the infinitely massive and the incredibly tiny. Perhaps in realising this we can see we are not very important after all. I think we should take more care to preserve our tiny/huge planet so that humankind can continue to survive and flourish.
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This group I’m in is starting up again this week. At the moment I haven’t the time to get involved. But in a couple of weeks I might be able to join in again. I’m the meantime if you live in Stoke you might want to give it a look this weekend. Just up the canal from Etruria industrial museum by Summit lock on the trent and merdy canal. I think there is an exhibition on. There will also be the chance to do some hands on clay art work.
sometimes a sketch turns out to be a cartoon instead and vice versa. In this case I was just going to draw a smiley face but it turned out to be more of the real thing. I won’t put up a comparison photo but it does look a bit like him!
Happy Easter everyone.
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Mallaband-Brown